Navigating the new age of advertising: Sanchayeeta Verma

We all know that there are tectonic shifts in the way advertising is working with consumers today. The real issue is whether our rate of learning is faster than the rate of change. Advertising is the way we take messages to our consumers to get them to know, love and buy our brands. These messages ride on content platforms and the content ecosystem is changing faster than the eye can blink. The news broadcast industry for instance, has had to do a complete unlearn and learn, as they see the distribution mechanisms for news constantly morph and change. First it was offline moving to digital platforms, then it was news jumping across social platforms and now we have curated news coming in from newer and newer aggregator platforms.

Go-to-consumer routes are also going through myriad shifts. This year Wimbledon used AI to curate content for its followers. Adidas used the Music Runbot for consumer engagement. Absolut created an India special edition of its iconic bottle for its launch in the country. Programmatic has changed inventory management to audience management. In each of these cases, the usual approach to advertising had to be changed. Now why is that?

On one hand there is surplus of choice – products, brands, services. Media and content clutter is at an all time high. On the other hand our world is never out of recessionary trends, making sales unpredictable. Add to this the complexities of today’s purchase journeys, with overload of information paralyzing consumers & altering their shopping journeys. Triggers reaching undecided consumers at right moments are leading to quick & previously unseen conversions. There is more data than what we can use. We need to slice and dice this data to get to unique insights to create these triggers.

In this new world, the rules of advertising have changed.

1. We need to navigate the new world through meaningful Actions (triggers) based on new insights derived from connections between the Consumer-Content-Data eco-system.

It is these new actions that will help our brands connect with consumers and get the desired conversions along their purchase journeys. In today’s new age of advertising, we need to be aware that old formulas will not work. Experiment fast and furious to create new learning to survive and flourish.

2. While doing this we need to be not only nimble in tactics, but also plan long-term & in-depth to manage the complexities of the new media eco-system.

The digitally connected consumer & content ecosystem throws up challenges. It is important to ensure right deployment of our media presence, with the right measurement against the right metrics, especially in digital. Our media activity needs to hold steadfast against the norms of addressability and view-ability to ensure our dollars are being spent properly. For this, the right tools need to be deployed and used. The new age media ecosystem can be a maze and we need to ensure taking wrong or half-baked decisions don’t cost us. 

3. Finally, don’t look at individual parts, but look at the entire ecosystem to decide how to master this exciting new world.

Activate 70:20:10 actions across the entire offline + digital world. Use single-source measurement for both media output & impact on business outcome. Keep experimenting and build a repertoire of new learning to create the blueprint for now and the future

It is in mastery of these new rules of advertising that we can adapt to the new world. We can break free of recessionary forces and bring in inordinate growth for our brands.     

Authored by: Sanchayeeta Verma- Managing Partner, Maxus South India & South Asia